Workpieces, including food products, are cut or otherwise portioned or sliced into smaller/thinner portions by processors in accordance with customer needs. Also, excess fat, bone, and other foreign or undesired materials are routinely trimmed from food products. It is usually highly desirable to portion, slice and/or trim the workpieces into uniform sizes, for example, for steaks to be served at restaurants or chicken fillets used in frozen dinners or in chicken sandwiches. Much of the portioning/trimming of workpieces, in particular food products, is now carried out with the use of high-speed portioning/slicing machines. These machines use various scanning techniques to ascertain the size and shape of the food product as it is being advanced on a moving conveyor. This information is analyzed with the aid of a computer to determine how to most efficiently portion the food product into optimum sizes. For example, a customer may desire chicken breast portions in two different weight sizes, but with no fat or with a limited amount of acceptable fat. The chicken breast is scanned as it moves on a conveyor belt and a determination is made through the use of a computer as to how best to portion the chicken breast to the weights desired by the customer, so as to use the chicken breast most effectively.
Portioning and/or trimming of the workpiece can be carried out by various cutting devices, including high-speed water jet cutters or rotary or reciprocating blades, as the food product continues to travel on the conveyor. Also, slicing of the workpiece can be carried out by various well-known slicing devices. Once the portioning/trimming has occurred, the resulting final portions are separated from the trim and off-loaded from the conveyor by hand to be placed on a second take-away conveyor for further processing or, perhaps, to be placed in a storage bin. The manual offloading of portioned or final pieces is often unsatisfactory because labor is expensive and difficult to obtain, because humans make mistakes and fail to harvest all of the portions, and because it is difficult for the workers to visually distinguish between portions of similar but different specifications. As a result, the portioned/final piece may be placed onto the wrong conveyor or into the wrong storage bin or not be picked up at all. Also, the portioning of food products, especially fish, poultry or meat, typically occurs at relatively low temperatures, in the range of 40 degrees F. Performing the same repetitive off-loading tasks in this cold environment can lead to physical ailments, as well as creating an undesirable work environment. As such, relatively high worker turnover is not uncommon.
The present invention is directed at automatically portioning/slicing/cutting workpieces, including food products, and then automatically off-loading the portioned/final workpieces for further processing, for storage, etc. In addition, the present invention is capable of recognizing which particular portioned/final piece is being off-loaded so that portioned/final pieces of like weight, shape, or other physical parameter are routed to the proper off-loading conveyor, storage bin, etc, in a sorting or grading step that is accomplished by the automated offloading step.